Interview with Scott Rouse, Chris Perkins & Bill Slavicsek

[Henry]

Tis true: I'm only slightly taller than the iconic Lidda. And there's no way I'll be having the baby at Gen Con...I'm all for PR stunts and stuff, but not on that level!

"Growing the gamer pool... one munchkin at a time!" By the way, congrats.

 

[blargney the second]

This:

5. What I would love to see is the content broken into much smaller modules that can be pulled out of their context and sent into a "shopping cart" . . . so if the article on Orcus had Orcus' stats, a description of his demense, flavor text about his cult, a prestige class and stats for his high-priest, I could pull just that high preist into my cart without taking the rest of the article. Then I could pull a location map from the sweet map gallery, a trap from the trap section and print it all for my game later that evening. THAT would be sweet.

plus these:

1) I want an NPC generator to help prepare for my games. I want one as easy and quick as the NPC Designer at rpgattitude.com. I want to be able to select 'minotaur', 'barbarian 3', 'warlock 7', and hit enter and have it generate everything else. I want to be able to assign it specific weapons from Complete Warrior, a feat from Book of Vile Darkness and a template from MM4. Books that are outside the SRD.

2) I want maps printed in 1-inch squares to use D&D miniatures on. I spend plenty of time alreaedy scanning, enlarging, erasing room numbers, and printing maps in 8x11 format and fit them together if necessary. WotC staffers at GenCon made it known they wish they had the time to do this for their games because of the obvious utility.

3) I want specific Forgotten Realms and Eberron adventures. Generic adventures to fit anywhere? If you must, but we're swamped. 3rd party publishers seem to be all over that just fine. I want specific stories and monsters tied to the campaign worlds others can't touch with a 10-meter cattleprod.

4) A real, true integrated index/glossary of D&D 3.5 gaming terms, items, and things. My wife, specifically, would like to be able to search for a term read in Eberron book #2, without having to literally hunt page by page for the item in books 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 etc. of Eberron for the actual definition and game terms of that item in question.

equals HAWT.
-blarg

 

[Mistwell]

1. If you think that Hasbro corporate lawyers would have allowed WotC to pull a stunt like that just to help their "friends" out, than your view of corporate politics is a lot more rose-tinted than mine.

I am a corporate lawyer. I've been one for over a decade. Corporate lawyers, in all likelyhood, played no part whatsoever in any of this. I doubt they were consulted on any issue other than the contract itself, and some intellectual property issues. "When to make an announcement, and preparation for it" would not be in the venue of a corporate lawyer.

WOTC said pretty much what I said by the way. I quoted it. And Paizo has also implied they wanted to announce earlier becuase of their end of things.

2. Paizo HAD to make the announcement, because of their obligations to advertisers.

They did not have to make it this early, which is the issue.

Furthermore, if they waited until the very last minute to make the announcement, they would have likely been forced to file for bankruptcy, which would have looked EVEN WORSE for WotC. This way, WotC can at least hope that most of the vitriol will be forgotten by the time DI is launched.

I didn't say very last minute. The second to last issue would have been better for WOTC, and wouldn't have been a disaster for Piazo I bet. And if they needed to announce this early, they should have negotiated for that much earlier. If decisions were made between WOTC and Paizo over a year ago, and WOTC is now saying they did not intend to announce now, and it was Paizo's request to annouce early, I think it's a small leap to assume Piazo never asked earlier about the annoucement date being early, and only asked recently, and that was a screw-up on Paizo's part (and WOTCs for agreeing).

3. Speaking as an IT professional*, if WotC cannot provide any sort of information on the DI four-five months prior to its supposed launch, than the launch is either not going to happen, or the DI will be launched in a terribly unfinished and incomplete state. I can say this with 99% certainty.

I don't think this has much to do with IT. It's a matter of content, not process, right now. And content is not set in stone, and often isn't four months in advance. They obviously are still working on the DRM issue, but they didn't say "we have no idea how to do the IT part of this".

 

[Zaruthustran]

Every major game company does what I advocated. Blizzard and Bioware do it too.

Every game company is aware of the danger of overpromising on a feature set. Far more prudent to talk in generalities, then reveal specifics a few months before launch. That's why the most important feature--the release date--isn't announced until the last possible moment. To use your example, Blizzard was one of the pioneers of the "when it's done" release date. To continue your example, Blizzard has been working for *years* on the product they'll be announcing May 19. Yet we haven't heard them say word one about it in public.

The value of buzz is highest right before and during launch; it's wise to keep the good stuff in your hand until you can play it for maximum effect.

HEY, COMPETITORS! WIZARDS IS DEVELOPING AN ONLINE MAGAZINE WITH INTERACTIVE FEATURES! YOU KNOW, LIKE PYRAMID + THE STUFF THEY'VE BEEN HINTING AT FOR ABOUT NINE MONTHS!

Disclosing that they plan to continue the Ecology and Demonomicon articles would hardly be earth-shattering, but it's exactly the sort of thing the upset fans want to hear to allay their fears.

Er, they already did announce their plan for those sorts of articles. While they didn't address those two specific features, they've revealed an awful lot about the Dragon and Dungeon components of the DI. The minutiae isn't really worth talking about; what if they chose to keep the feature but alter the name/roll two features together? People will complain that WotC "promised" one thing, delivered another. Far better--at this point--to not get into specifics. There's just no upside in going through the Dragon table of contents and declaring "this one particular article stays, this one goes".

[in reference to comment on what may or may not be insider trading]Not on this planet.

For all I know, you in fact are an expert in securities law--I'm not; I just have a business degree and buddies who are partners in firms that do specialize in securities law. Given my ignorance, I'll let this point go. But honestly, weighing the value between "promising" features on product in development against the risk of fines and jail... I have to conclude that it's better to not get into specifics too prematurely when communicating with the public. The upside just isn't worth it.

If you think a logo, a piece of art and a list of non-committed bullet point items constitutes a major disclosure, I have to wonder why the NSA is letting you post on this board during the work day.

Again, what's the upside? The logo could change, "a piece of art" is of questionable (negligible?) value, and there's no such thing as a "non-committed" bullet point list. We've all read the threads about Dragon. There are some reasonable responses, but there's also a scary amount of teeth-gnashing and hysteria. If WotC were to release a tentative feature list those same people would take the list as gospel, and cry bloody murder if WotC "broke their word" by changing or dropping a feature. Again, you've got to weigh the small potential value against the huge guaranteed risk.

Regardless of what you or I would do if we were in charge of corporate communication for WotC, there's no objective right answer or ideal solution. There's no single PR strategy that is perfect or that WotC "should" do. They've got a lot of smart people over there, and they've communicated as much as they feel they can--and this interview by Morrus is a direct response to a set of questions posed by this particular community. Wizards certainly didn't have to drop everything and come here to answer questions. But they did. They replied as best they could, thanked Morrus for the opportunity, and even asked the community at large for feedback and suggestions.

And still they catch flack. Good grief. I'm sure there's someone at Hasbro on the phone with WotC PR saying "What's the matter with you people? Every time you reach out, you get bit. Disengage and go quiet. It's just not worth it."

-z

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

After reading other points in this thread, I want to add the following to my "want" list:

Anything I pay for or download, I want to keep. If I paid for it, it's mine to use. I didn't mention this before because I didn't even consider the possibility that it might not happen.

Swift response to errors. If the DI community notices an error in a statblock, I want it checked and corrected. That's the beauty of online content: easy corrections.

Updating old material: I'd like to see updates to all 0e, 1e, 2e, and 3e materials (DUNGEON adventures, DRAGON articles, modules and splatbooks) to a comprehensive 3.5 bible. Again, with the DI, this should be easier, because without print costs it isn't nearly as dangerous. Also, I'm sure a DI community would be highly motivate to contribute to official updates, as evidence by the old Xe --> 3e stuff that was done on enworld at the beginning of 3e. Think of it as a fan-powered, WotC owned think-tank. Then, with all that material converted to 3.5e, making the conversions to 4e would happen much faster.

 

[DonTadow]

After reading other points in this thread, I want to add the following to my "want" list:

Anything I pay for or download, I want to keep. If I paid for it, it's mine to use. I didn't mention this before because I didn't even consider the possibility that it might not happen.

Swift response to errors. If the DI community notices an error in a statblock, I want it checked and corrected. That's the beauty of online content: easy corrections.

Updating old material: I'd like to see updates to all 0e, 1e, 2e, and 3e materials (DUNGEON adventures, DRAGON articles, modules and splatbooks) to a comprehensive 3.5 bible. Again, with the DI, this should be easier, because without print costs it isn't nearly as dangerous. Also, I'm sure a DI community would be highly motivate to contribute to official updates, as evidence by the old Xe --> 3e stuff that was done on enworld at the beginning of 3e. Think of it as a fan-powered, WotC owned think-tank. Then, with all that material converted to 3.5e, making the conversions to 4e would happen much faster.

'My comfortability with this online product has grown more with this interview. The best answer was
"How much of this stuff could you use in your campaign".

That's the key. I love the idea of weekly new d and d stuff to read, products other than words to help me build a campaign. Finally the sage questions will be up to date.

 

[Thomas Percy]

ScotMartin - you have done great compilation works. Thanks. It's a good base for other ideas.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And still they catch flack. Good grief. I'm sure there's someone at Hasbro on the phone with WotC PR saying "What's the matter with you people? Every time you reach out, you get bit. Disengage and go quiet. It's just not worth it."

They catch flack because the overwhelming majority of people who have responded to the interview think they didn't say enough.

No one is asking for business models or anything that they'd get in real trouble for disclosing. The commodities example does not apply, period.

The only real downside to stating any plans is that some idiot nine months later will scream that they've been lied to because Article X or Article Y didn't make the final cut. I've been on the other side of having to listen to those sorts of complaints, even when I thought my company did a good job of explaining why Feature X or Feature Y didn't make it and I still think it's worth doing.

The majority of folks are pretty rational. They want a taste but appreciate that they won't hear everything and that things will change over time.

The irrational folks who will scream about being lied to are the ones who are going to scream no matter what.

You can't create a policy around irrational people who can never be pleased. You go with making the vast majority -- who are rational, who are reachable and who will understand if you deal with them honestly and proactively -- happy.

Again, I've done this exact job. I'm not criticizing them because I want to know every tiny detail of what they're doing. I'm saying that, when I've been in their shoes -- when Blizzard or Bioware or even the WotC in the days before the 3E launch was in their shoes -- they did a much better job of communicating with the public and it's not terribly difficult to do a lot better.

I'm happy that you're happy with the interview. I get that they apparently have one or more superiors who are preventing proactive and productive communcation. But none of that makes their communication over the past two weeks anything other than a complete mess.

 

[Maggan]

But none of that makes their communication over the past two weeks anything other than a complete mess.

Good grief, is it two weeks already? Time flies when you're having fun! But wait, I ain't having fun ... well, I guess time flies even still.

I must say that I think that the discussions here on EN World has landed on a level that should be comfortable enough for WotC to participate. It's going to be really, really interesting to see what people are saying in a month, and after summer.

Also ... the elusive Dragonlance issue ... that seems to be a whole other kind of nightmare for WotC at the moment.

/M

 

[Zaruthustran]

Whizbang, I agree with everything you just said. Except maybe the bit about it being easy to have done a better job. PR isn't easy.

It's demonstrably clear that the reaction was negative; it's not clear that the negative reaction could have been easily averted. I think no matter how WotC had broached the subject, the community would have howled. Moving Dragon and Dungeon completely online is simply a Big Deal.

But, yeah, they could have been better prepared for the outrage, and I bet they themselves wish that the DI was more solidly defined/far enough along that they could talk in more detail about features. I agree with what you've been saying: those details would have undoubtedly helped. I recall something in the interview about WotC wanting to make the announcement sooner rather than later as a favor to Paizo (and Paizo's advertisers and subscribers). If they were thinking only of themselves, WotC probably would have preferred to wait a couple more months.

-z